On rumblings, smoke, retreads, and what words actually mean this time of year

Let's talk a bit about hockey insider culture.

It’s a pretty big week for buzz words within NHL coverage.

“Hearing that.”

“Smoke.”

“Word is.”

“Rumblings.”

You’ve seen them often. If you’ve been curios at all about where Mitch Marner might end up as a free agent on July 1, you’ve heard one of those phrases listed before a team’s name in a social media post.

It gets even more rampant this time of year, the gap between the Stanley Cup being awarded and the NHL Free Agency. The NHL Draft is, by nature, a business of speculation and that naturally drives out more members of hockey media trying to become “insiders” at this time of year.

So, today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how this all works and why it can be incredible frustrating at the same time.

Let’s use the Marner case and the fact he’s on the “radar” for some of the better NHL teams.

Radar doesn’t actually mean anything. My definition of radar in this sense is likely completely different from your definition of radar, unless we happen to be talking about a physical device that sends out radio waves for detecting and locating an object by the reflection of the radio waves.

The one that is brought up to me most frequently is the case of Marner and the Dallas Stars, in fact the DLLS Stars show did an entire segment on it yesterday.

The Stars also have this big-game hunter feel about them after shocking much of the hockey world with the Mikko Rantanen trade in the middle of the season.

The Stars also fired their head coach after three straight trips to the Western Conference Finals, they are bold now, they are swinging big!

They also don’t have the cap space to feasibly make the Marner move work, not without trading Jason Robertson and then likely something more.

So while an actual marriage between Marner and the Stars seems impossible, the public flirtation actually helps both sides. Marner being on the Stars radar helps drive up Marner’s value, an alleged additional contender on the prowl, while if it works Marner will cost more to whatever team does sign him and cost them valuable cap space.

Whether it’s Marner himself or his agent, more likely, having as many teams on the “radar” as possible strengthens a negating position.

We have to respect that the Stars and Marner will talk, but to what end are they actually serious about coupling up?

NHL free agency really isn’t much different from a high school where horned up teenagers do what’s best to grab larger public attention and make their actual target jealous.

If I can, let me somehow connect horned up teenagers NHL coaches. Again, let’s look at the Stars, who have the only active head coaching opening and aside from some crumbs, we’ve really gotten nothing about the coaching search.

I would argue I’m one of the four or five most plugged in non-team-employed reporters on the Stars beat. I’ve heard little about the coaching search, the Stars are keeping this close to the vest, and the only crumbs have come from the fact that Neil Graham was indeed interviewed and the Edmonton Oilers have granted permission for the Stars to interview Glen Gulutzan.

I know both Graham and Gulutzan, have both of their phone numbers, I also know people who are in their circles. Any attempt to glaze some information about this right now has been met with either silence or outright denial of any knowledge of the situation.

So, before we go any further, no, I don’t know what’s actually happening with the Stars coaching search.

Gulutzan’s name has also led to some social media reactions from Stars fans who remember his ill-fated first attempt coaching between 2011 and 2013, where the Stars missed the playoffs twice and he looked like a rookie coach unfit to lead an NHL bench.

It’s been a dozen years since then, Gulutzan has grown as a coach, been humbled twice, and in coaching circles is now pretty highly respected for how he runs both a power play and a personnel. Before Pete DeBoer was ever fired, right after Edmonton beat Dallas in the Western Conference Final, I said on the DLLS postgame show the Stars should hire him as their next head coach.

While I would personally like the Gulutzan hire, I also understand people freaking out about the potential hire when it was leaded to the Dallas Morning News that the Stars wouldn’t be looking for a “retread.”

And a coach that formerly coached the Stars would also be considered a “retread,” right?

Again we get into definitions and things that are superfluously thrown around. While Tim Cowlishaw got the scoop in the DMN that the Stars didn’t want a “retread,” the word “retread” was never actually defined.

When I personally think of a “retread” I think of a Peter Laviolette, Pete DeBoer, or John Tortorella. I personally have a hard time grouping Gulutzan into that group, but I also understand how someone else could see “retread” and look at Gulutzan’s résumé and see him that way.

But to get back to my larger point, I have no idea how Jim Nill and the Stars define “retread.” And unless Nill is going to present us with his own dictionary, we’ll never really know whether the Stars actually view Gulutzan as a “retread” or not.

At the end of the day, it’s all about semantics right now. Those with the information using the best words to hedge their bets, and those only getting morsels using other words that further hedge and protect their insider status as someone NHL teams talk to.

And it’s fine, I guess. It’s part of the business. I’m admittedly throwing stones in my own glass house right now. I’ve been part of the problem before and likely will be part of the problem again at some point.

But I think it’s important for everyone, myself included, to remember how much language and word definition vary from person to person. Rumblings and rumors can be fun and might be rooted in truth, but they also are often purposely built on being vague as possible by either team or media design.